A glorious synthesis and extension of your ideas. I devoured this article. The implications are where this really gets the heart racing. This feels like the foundation for a resynthesis of science and religion, just what humanity needs to burst into a new post-reductionist era.
Thank you Shane. Yes, I think this approach can potentially end much of the conflict between science and religion. A highly evolved universe, travelling along a developmental path that is fine-tuned to produce intelligent life, is explicable in terms of science, while fulfilling many of the functions of a religious belief system. I keep returning to that old quote of Teilhard de Chardin, "The universe is God coming into being."
Stellar work! You've not only made a daring rush at the truth, unsupported by conventional credentials, but given us all a great deal of fun in the process. You might be right, too, of course, and justly win universal praise.
As you continue to explore the rich theme of the Eggiverse, give a thought to the possibility that the universe has been (super-)naturally selected to reproduce with the help of human agency. Reëcreational Theology embraces that hypothesis and from it makes an argument for having s*x (like biological sex but moreso) with the universe; see: https://t0morrow.substack.com/
Congratulations; you're well on your way to sainthood in the first real science of theology.
Thank you, I think! If evolutionary cosmology gains traction, I do think there will be an extraordinarily fertile conversation between science and religion. The boundaries will get very blurred. (And I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance to that, from both the science and religion sides.)
Geoff, you are clearly riding on the breaking crest of the shockwave of what is likely to eventually be recognized as the most profound revolution in science to now. I, too, am a rider on the boundaries of several sciences, natural philosophy, and epistemology. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of my early life, I was already a polymath by the time I finished elementary school - where more than 90% of my learning was extracurricular. Even when finishing secondary education in San Diego's top university prep school as a science major covering a pre-engineering curriculum, at least 70% of my learning would have been extracurricular - more than enough for me to be riding several shockwave crests. In my professional careers, these shockwaves led me into 2 years of postdoc study of the history and epistemology of science, especially revolutionary paradigm busting, amongst numerous other diversions into other bodies of knowledge.
I have a deep understanding of many of the problems you are facing, and I have most of the disciplinary and epistemological tools you are asking for above. The only one where I would be a dead loss is with funding. I'm retired, living on Australia's aged pension and a small amount of US Social Security (at least until Trump decides expats are traitors...).
Some Background
My combination of learnings is so unique that I think some background is required to understand how the multidisciplinary skill set I claim is even possible to be found and still to be functional in a single person - even though it was acquired over an 85-year life span.
I was raised by two scientifically trained parents (my Mother has a BS in Chemistry, and my Father has a BS in Geology and worked as a salesman, boatsman, industrial engineer, boat-builder, commercial fisherman, and integrated logistic support engineer). We lived full-time on a 1929 "gentleman's motor yacht" that Dad served on part-time in the Coast Guard Auxiliary when it was drafted as a harbor patrol boat in WWII, grabbed and refurbished when it was demobilized as war surplus in 1945. On workdays and school days, our home was moored in LA/Long Beach Harbor in the midst of active oilfields and then San Diego Harbor, home of the US Pacific Fleet ships and the Navy's West Coast aircraft repair and maintenance facility, along with a plethora of high-tech industries, research institutes, museums, etc. -- including aquaria, astronautics, natural history, nuclear power, marine biology/oceanography, zoos, etc. When we weren't required to be in port, our yacht spent a lot of time anchored in several of the many coves around Catalina Island, where I spent hours of the day snorkeling around the extensive kelp forests and rocky shorelines.
Carl Sagan explored the Universe in his "Ship of the Imagination -- [for observing, thinking, speculating and testing] – perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds dreamed, and worlds of fact". My ship of the imagination was real: stout cedar hull & varnished mahogany superstructure that physically carried me to many different living worlds that I could touch, smell, feel and interact with, and worlds of theoretical, technical, and biological knowledge.
Some of my relevant areas of expertise and knowledge (order of initiation). Once started, my interests and learning in each of these bodies of knowledge continued through my life up to today.
• physical geology and paleontology (from 1945 - father's 1930's textbooks & local oil-fields and pristine landscapes of offshore islands + added resources in physical oceanography and geophysical research facilities accessible from secondary schools in San Diego).
• marine biology, ecology, and systematics across beaches, rocky shores, eutrophic estuaries & harbors with muddy bottoms, piers & floats, sea-grass meadows; open ocean; kelp forests, rocky shores with coraline algae, various red and brown algeas, sea grasses in rock and sand-bottomed coves on offshore bottoms, etc. (from 1945 - accessed via the family's yacht. The combination of Earth sciences with the breadth of marine biology, led to strong early interests in evolution).
• physics & engineering with a focus on nuclear physics and engineering, astronomy, & cosmology (from 1945 - following atom bombing of Japan - facilitated by access to good libraries, Griffith Observatory -- mid '40s and early '50s, and in high school and university access to 100" Mt Wilson Telescope and San Diego's aerospace research, development & manufacturing institutes & astronomical facilities. The addition of physics and cosmology to Earth sciences and evolutionary biology clearly extended to considering the nature of time and the evolutionary universe).
• Microscopy, microbiology, optics, and microanatomy (from around 1948 when a retired photographer living on a neighboring yacht gave me a set of professional objective lenses that fit the screw threads on a toy microscope I had. I soon kludged the rest of the mechanics and optics required to give me a university quality microscope that allowed me to explore the diversity of microscopic life from which most of the animal and plant phyla - and their embryos - evolved. Teaching invertebrate biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided me with access to a high-powered, long-focus medical microscope, which afforded ample opportunities to study the unfettered activities of various phyla of microbiota through the side of marine and freshwater aquaria.)
• marine and aerospace engineering and production (from 1945 - when my father began restoring our family yacht and rebuilding two surplus landings into highly capable albacore trollers amongst the WWII shipyards, and later worked as a boat handler for Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose", for several decades the largest heavier than air craft ever flown. From around 1962, when we moved to San Diego, he worked as an industrial and logistic support engineer for Ryan Aeronautical and then overhaul & repair of the Pacific Naval Air Arm at North Island Air Station just across the channel from where we were moored. And then San Diego was also the home of General Dynamics' development and production of Atlas rockets that launched the Moon landers.)
Beginning with my tertiary education in 1957, my areas of expertise began expanding exponentially. These will only be listed - again, more or less in the order they were acquired.
• All generations of computer technologies: cybernetics, analysis, design, flow charting, and programming.
• General biology & natural history: origin of life & exobiology, population biology, biogeography, niche construction, and systematics & classification.
• Radiation and systems ecology: engineering & remote sensing analyses of nuclear accidents (e.g., Fukushima Daiichi, Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, etc.), biological and civilian impacts of environmental radiation, radiological tracing, isotopic dating, trophic ecology, and food webs.
• Other ecology: e.g., wildfire origins & succession.
• Biochemistry and structural biology: molecular biology, cell biology & ultrastructure, histology, and functional & comparative anatomy.
• Earth sciences: plate tektonics, geomorphology, stratigraphy, climatology, glaciology, physical oceanography, hydrology, natural sources of greenhouse gases and their feedback contributions to global warming.
• Historical studies: history of philosophy of science and technology, nature and structure of scientific revolutions after Thomas Kuhn, nature of wars (focus on WWII), biography of leadership, social change, economic structure, comparative religion, archeology, hominin evolution, emergence of language and self-consciousness, coevolution of cognition and technologies.
• Theory of heirarchically complex living systems: emergence of autopoiesis at several levels of organization, organizational epistemology, OODA cycles, and management of organizational knowledge.
• Complexity, assembly theory, chaos, complex systems analysis. Engineering: Failure modes effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), logistics support engineering and analysis, integrated project lifecycle data & documentation management, engineering change management, etc. Biology: emergence, phylogenesis, thresholds, collapse, extinction. Evolutionary cosmology.
• Philosophy & epistemology: evolutionary epistemology, normal science, truth, verification, falsification, fallibility, objective vs subjective knowledge, Kuhn's paradigms & scientific revolutions, radical constructivism, reductionism, comparative approach, fake news & alternative facts, prediction, anticipation, forecasting, modeling, Popper's three worlds of knowledge, teleology & teleonomy, Aristotle's four causes, Ockham's razor, philosophy of mind.
As soon as I have the time, I will share some of my relevant writings and make several suggestions as to where your theory can be strengthened and extended. There is very little I would disagree with in terms of your theoretical proposals or interpretation of evidence.
William Hall, PhD
Retired: evolutionary biologist / epistemologist / complex systems analyst & designer / earth systems scientist
The idea of early black hole formation driving later star and galaxy formation a great idea, but I can't think of any reason you need to bring in evolution. If you haul in evolution, you have to come up with a mechanism that preserves some of the laws of physics across the creation of a new one while allowing others to vary. Darwin could at least start out with the empirical fact of heredity. New organisms largely resemble their parent organisms. We have nothing like this with regard to universe formation.
This is especially problematic since the whole evolutionary idea is unnecessary. Why not just invoke the anthropic principle? Here we are debating this. That's an empirical fact. Why haul in so much extraneous complexity. Why deal with annoyed evolutionary biologists who have their own philosophical concerns? There's an awful lot of teleology here. We don't know how new universes are formed, and almost by definition we can't know much about them.
It makes much more sense to develop a theory that explains our universe without bonus mysticism, and it looks like you have a good one here. I don't see how it benefits from introducing failed universes and the possibility of super-universes and the like. It offers a good framework for addressing the early galaxy problem, the voids and filaments problem and, for all I know, the rotation curve problem.
P.S. In N-body research, there's a common pattern of increasingly tightly coupled subsystems with their angular momentum dissipated by overall system expansion. This fits very well with that. Complexity develops from the basic mathematics of gravitational attraction in an expanding universe. I took most of The Janus Point with a grain of salt, but I suspect the discussion of the N-body problem is at least aligned.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
I really like the cosmological part, seems like a neat solution to many important problems. Nice work!
But I am not convinced at all by the evolutionary part:
1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition.
2. To have evolution we need reproduction, which we have here, but also some competition for resources. Do universes compete for something among themselves? In an evolutionary theory I would like to see a conclusion that in the long run there are no universes not optimized for survival. Without that we can only say that our universe is more probable than a universe which cannot harbor us, but that's not super interesting.
3. It is unecessary to make cosmological part work. I suppose they fit nicely together, but if cosmological part explains observations and gives correct predictions it does so regardless of a reason for our universe's starting conditions.
Thanks for that feedback, Michał. I am going to cheat and paste in again the lengthy reply I just made to Kaleberg, immediately above, because I see you're troubled by the same thing, the evolutionary part of the theory, and my reply is therefore essentially the same.
But I'll add in an extra point of reassurance for you first, though: To have evolution work in the case of universes, you don't need competition for resources. Universe have important differences from DNA-based animals. Universes, for example, can produce matter-antimatter pairs in unlimited numbers immediately after the Big Bang. They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.
And here is my reply to Kaleberg, again!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
"1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition."
I am a hobbyist at best and I'm sure I haven't grasped everything fully, so please indulge me. I agree with your statement, yet perhaps we could see galaxies from relatives-universes.
Could galaxies from neighboring universes expand toward us, be observable and perhaps even collide with a galaxy of ours? Could the origin of such galaxies be detected as different?
Without presuming another dimension, I'd guess that the multiverse resembles a clump of multiplying cells butting up against each other.
2. That’s what I was thinking. If the reproductive cost is zero, per the article, and given that time is an in-universe constraint rather than existing outside of it, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’, if my logic is on track here.
Moreover, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
At any rate, this article is very interesting and I love his critiques of the mainstream theory and reasons behind it. Personally, I think that reality tends to be more interesting than whatever story we come up with to draw meaning from it, which is why his theory seems (to me anyway) to lose momentum when he gets into the cosmological and more speculative section.
Cool theory, love it. Unlikely as it appears, it would be really funny if a major branch of physics ended up disrupted by a complete outsider's theory formulated in qualitative (non-math) language.
I remember reading that S. Hawking more or less proved that black holes radiate energy, so that smaller ones can end up vanishing entirely. How does that fit with your theory, or Smolin's? If the creation of a black hole also creates a universe, what happens to that universe when the black hole vanishes?
I suggest you look into black hole electrons, an old hypothesis that fell out of favor mostly because nobody could figure out how to test it, because I think you may be grossly underestimating the number of black holes involved.
Because it seems to me that the theory predicts something else: Every particle that can be made out of a black hole, will be made out of a black hole.
Aaaaargh! Yes, black hole electrons are an alarming possibility. Thanks for reminding me, I won't sleep tonight now...
No, I don't go there, because as you say, it seems untestable right now. And of course there are also the disturbing parallels between protons and black holes...
But again, I'm not qualified to wade into such deep water. I will stick to my modest task of explaining material reality at the macro scale in terms of evolution of universes...
Really intriguing idea—hadn't considered black hole jets as a primary sculptor of cosmic structure. Appreciate the clarity and boldness in presenting an alternative model. Definitely gave me something new to think about!
You might want to avoid association with him because he is a pariah in scientific mainstream, but Rupert Sheldrake has always been a great idol of mine, and I was wondering if you were at all inspired by him. He has spoken quite a bit about how structures (& physical rules) of the universe emerge through evolutionary processes. He's also fleshed out quite a few predictions, scientifically testable hypothesis that I think can be repurposed by your evolutionary cosmology.
It seems like this “dark galaxy” is being interpreted as evidence of “dark matter”, since it otherwise seems to be only composed of gas and dust and ought to dissipate. But it is only known about because of extremely faint readings, and so the overall picture has a great deal of interpretive latitude (just like the concept of “dark matter” itself).
If black holes produce universes you have evolution selection pressures meaning that under most selection assumptions across possible observers we should be in a universe that is ~perfectly designed for creating a huge number of small black holes, as might happen with runaway AI that has that as a strong goal/side effect.
I mean, I just sat back and mentally applauded when I got to the end of this. A genius theory delivered in an entertaining manner. I'm a novice in astronomy, so can't comment on the content really, other than I follow (most of) it, I can (sort of) understand it, and it makes sense to me. Couple of commenters mention that the evolution bit is not necessary - tend to agree it doesn't really add anything, but its pretty cool!
What I'd love to see is comment from people who are experts on stuff like dark matter. People who maybe challenge your theory. Where are they all? You normally can't keep dissenters away from Substack comments. Are they dumbstruck into silence? Or is this material not reaching them?
I think if you actually get this off the ground as a genuine challenger theory that goes mainstream and is proven, it would be as impressive an achievement as anything I've ever known an individual do. I'm talking Darwin and Einstein here.
I might be missing the mechanisms of heredity within this evolutionary paradigm. If a universe's 'fitness' is simply determined by the propensity for black holes to form within it, i.e:
1. Black holes spawn universes
2. Universes well-suited for black holes production greatly outnumber those where black holes are scarce
3. Technological societies provide an immense evolutionary advantage in this context, as technological progress converges towards the creation of artificial black holes (which greatly outnumber naturally-formed ones)
how then would universes inherit from the context of their spawning black hole? What might be the analogue to recombination or mosaicism yielding subtle incremental differences subject to selective pressure?
A glorious synthesis and extension of your ideas. I devoured this article. The implications are where this really gets the heart racing. This feels like the foundation for a resynthesis of science and religion, just what humanity needs to burst into a new post-reductionist era.
Thank you Shane. Yes, I think this approach can potentially end much of the conflict between science and religion. A highly evolved universe, travelling along a developmental path that is fine-tuned to produce intelligent life, is explicable in terms of science, while fulfilling many of the functions of a religious belief system. I keep returning to that old quote of Teilhard de Chardin, "The universe is God coming into being."
Wanted, skilled plaster repair technician.
Stellar work! You've not only made a daring rush at the truth, unsupported by conventional credentials, but given us all a great deal of fun in the process. You might be right, too, of course, and justly win universal praise.
As you continue to explore the rich theme of the Eggiverse, give a thought to the possibility that the universe has been (super-)naturally selected to reproduce with the help of human agency. Reëcreational Theology embraces that hypothesis and from it makes an argument for having s*x (like biological sex but moreso) with the universe; see: https://t0morrow.substack.com/
Congratulations; you're well on your way to sainthood in the first real science of theology.
Thank you, I think! If evolutionary cosmology gains traction, I do think there will be an extraordinarily fertile conversation between science and religion. The boundaries will get very blurred. (And I suspect there will be a great deal of resistance to that, from both the science and religion sides.)
"Now What?" -- Indeed!
Geoff, you are clearly riding on the breaking crest of the shockwave of what is likely to eventually be recognized as the most profound revolution in science to now. I, too, am a rider on the boundaries of several sciences, natural philosophy, and epistemology. Due to the extraordinary circumstances of my early life, I was already a polymath by the time I finished elementary school - where more than 90% of my learning was extracurricular. Even when finishing secondary education in San Diego's top university prep school as a science major covering a pre-engineering curriculum, at least 70% of my learning would have been extracurricular - more than enough for me to be riding several shockwave crests. In my professional careers, these shockwaves led me into 2 years of postdoc study of the history and epistemology of science, especially revolutionary paradigm busting, amongst numerous other diversions into other bodies of knowledge.
I have a deep understanding of many of the problems you are facing, and I have most of the disciplinary and epistemological tools you are asking for above. The only one where I would be a dead loss is with funding. I'm retired, living on Australia's aged pension and a small amount of US Social Security (at least until Trump decides expats are traitors...).
Some Background
My combination of learnings is so unique that I think some background is required to understand how the multidisciplinary skill set I claim is even possible to be found and still to be functional in a single person - even though it was acquired over an 85-year life span.
I was raised by two scientifically trained parents (my Mother has a BS in Chemistry, and my Father has a BS in Geology and worked as a salesman, boatsman, industrial engineer, boat-builder, commercial fisherman, and integrated logistic support engineer). We lived full-time on a 1929 "gentleman's motor yacht" that Dad served on part-time in the Coast Guard Auxiliary when it was drafted as a harbor patrol boat in WWII, grabbed and refurbished when it was demobilized as war surplus in 1945. On workdays and school days, our home was moored in LA/Long Beach Harbor in the midst of active oilfields and then San Diego Harbor, home of the US Pacific Fleet ships and the Navy's West Coast aircraft repair and maintenance facility, along with a plethora of high-tech industries, research institutes, museums, etc. -- including aquaria, astronautics, natural history, nuclear power, marine biology/oceanography, zoos, etc. When we weren't required to be in port, our yacht spent a lot of time anchored in several of the many coves around Catalina Island, where I spent hours of the day snorkeling around the extensive kelp forests and rocky shorelines.
Carl Sagan explored the Universe in his "Ship of the Imagination -- [for observing, thinking, speculating and testing] – perfect as a snowflake, organic as a dandelion seed, it will carry us to worlds dreamed, and worlds of fact". My ship of the imagination was real: stout cedar hull & varnished mahogany superstructure that physically carried me to many different living worlds that I could touch, smell, feel and interact with, and worlds of theoretical, technical, and biological knowledge.
Some of my relevant areas of expertise and knowledge (order of initiation). Once started, my interests and learning in each of these bodies of knowledge continued through my life up to today.
• physical geology and paleontology (from 1945 - father's 1930's textbooks & local oil-fields and pristine landscapes of offshore islands + added resources in physical oceanography and geophysical research facilities accessible from secondary schools in San Diego).
• marine biology, ecology, and systematics across beaches, rocky shores, eutrophic estuaries & harbors with muddy bottoms, piers & floats, sea-grass meadows; open ocean; kelp forests, rocky shores with coraline algae, various red and brown algeas, sea grasses in rock and sand-bottomed coves on offshore bottoms, etc. (from 1945 - accessed via the family's yacht. The combination of Earth sciences with the breadth of marine biology, led to strong early interests in evolution).
• physics & engineering with a focus on nuclear physics and engineering, astronomy, & cosmology (from 1945 - following atom bombing of Japan - facilitated by access to good libraries, Griffith Observatory -- mid '40s and early '50s, and in high school and university access to 100" Mt Wilson Telescope and San Diego's aerospace research, development & manufacturing institutes & astronomical facilities. The addition of physics and cosmology to Earth sciences and evolutionary biology clearly extended to considering the nature of time and the evolutionary universe).
• Microscopy, microbiology, optics, and microanatomy (from around 1948 when a retired photographer living on a neighboring yacht gave me a set of professional objective lenses that fit the screw threads on a toy microscope I had. I soon kludged the rest of the mechanics and optics required to give me a university quality microscope that allowed me to explore the diversity of microscopic life from which most of the animal and plant phyla - and their embryos - evolved. Teaching invertebrate biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville provided me with access to a high-powered, long-focus medical microscope, which afforded ample opportunities to study the unfettered activities of various phyla of microbiota through the side of marine and freshwater aquaria.)
• marine and aerospace engineering and production (from 1945 - when my father began restoring our family yacht and rebuilding two surplus landings into highly capable albacore trollers amongst the WWII shipyards, and later worked as a boat handler for Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose", for several decades the largest heavier than air craft ever flown. From around 1962, when we moved to San Diego, he worked as an industrial and logistic support engineer for Ryan Aeronautical and then overhaul & repair of the Pacific Naval Air Arm at North Island Air Station just across the channel from where we were moored. And then San Diego was also the home of General Dynamics' development and production of Atlas rockets that launched the Moon landers.)
Beginning with my tertiary education in 1957, my areas of expertise began expanding exponentially. These will only be listed - again, more or less in the order they were acquired.
• All generations of computer technologies: cybernetics, analysis, design, flow charting, and programming.
• Cognitive science: neurophysiology, sensory & developmental physiology research, primate cognition, origins of consciousness & languages, artificial intelligence.
• General biology & natural history: origin of life & exobiology, population biology, biogeography, niche construction, and systematics & classification.
• Radiation and systems ecology: engineering & remote sensing analyses of nuclear accidents (e.g., Fukushima Daiichi, Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, etc.), biological and civilian impacts of environmental radiation, radiological tracing, isotopic dating, trophic ecology, and food webs.
• Other ecology: e.g., wildfire origins & succession.
• Biochemistry and structural biology: molecular biology, cell biology & ultrastructure, histology, and functional & comparative anatomy.
• Genetic systems: molecular genetics, cytogenetics, classical genetics, comparative genetics, population genetics, speciation & evolution.
• Earth sciences: plate tektonics, geomorphology, stratigraphy, climatology, glaciology, physical oceanography, hydrology, natural sources of greenhouse gases and their feedback contributions to global warming.
• Historical studies: history of philosophy of science and technology, nature and structure of scientific revolutions after Thomas Kuhn, nature of wars (focus on WWII), biography of leadership, social change, economic structure, comparative religion, archeology, hominin evolution, emergence of language and self-consciousness, coevolution of cognition and technologies.
• Theory of heirarchically complex living systems: emergence of autopoiesis at several levels of organization, organizational epistemology, OODA cycles, and management of organizational knowledge.
• Complexity, assembly theory, chaos, complex systems analysis. Engineering: Failure modes effects and criticality analysis (FMECA), logistics support engineering and analysis, integrated project lifecycle data & documentation management, engineering change management, etc. Biology: emergence, phylogenesis, thresholds, collapse, extinction. Evolutionary cosmology.
• Philosophy & epistemology: evolutionary epistemology, normal science, truth, verification, falsification, fallibility, objective vs subjective knowledge, Kuhn's paradigms & scientific revolutions, radical constructivism, reductionism, comparative approach, fake news & alternative facts, prediction, anticipation, forecasting, modeling, Popper's three worlds of knowledge, teleology & teleonomy, Aristotle's four causes, Ockham's razor, philosophy of mind.
As soon as I have the time, I will share some of my relevant writings and make several suggestions as to where your theory can be strengthened and extended. There is very little I would disagree with in terms of your theoretical proposals or interpretation of evidence.
William Hall, PhD
Retired: evolutionary biologist / epistemologist / complex systems analyst & designer / earth systems scientist
Evolutionary Biology of Species and Organizations (https://web.archive.org/web/20230328025721/https://orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/)
Hon. Editor VoteClimateOne.orgs.au's Climate Sentinel News
What an absolutely fascinating life you have led. Thank you for sharing it with me.
I am delighted that you largely agree with my proposals. Yes, please do indeed suggest improvements and extensions to the theory. Much appreciated.
Fondest regards,
-Julian
The idea of early black hole formation driving later star and galaxy formation a great idea, but I can't think of any reason you need to bring in evolution. If you haul in evolution, you have to come up with a mechanism that preserves some of the laws of physics across the creation of a new one while allowing others to vary. Darwin could at least start out with the empirical fact of heredity. New organisms largely resemble their parent organisms. We have nothing like this with regard to universe formation.
This is especially problematic since the whole evolutionary idea is unnecessary. Why not just invoke the anthropic principle? Here we are debating this. That's an empirical fact. Why haul in so much extraneous complexity. Why deal with annoyed evolutionary biologists who have their own philosophical concerns? There's an awful lot of teleology here. We don't know how new universes are formed, and almost by definition we can't know much about them.
It makes much more sense to develop a theory that explains our universe without bonus mysticism, and it looks like you have a good one here. I don't see how it benefits from introducing failed universes and the possibility of super-universes and the like. It offers a good framework for addressing the early galaxy problem, the voids and filaments problem and, for all I know, the rotation curve problem.
P.S. In N-body research, there's a common pattern of increasingly tightly coupled subsystems with their angular momentum dissipated by overall system expansion. This fits very well with that. Complexity develops from the basic mathematics of gravitational attraction in an expanding universe. I took most of The Janus Point with a grain of salt, but I suspect the discussion of the N-body problem is at least aligned.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
Yep, I agree that black holes play very important role, the are basically non-agentic matter (they can't "choose")
We're pretty much made out of big bangs (singularities, geometrical points) bumping into each other.
We shared the ethicophysics theory that interprets physics as discrete point agents randomly choosing quantum paths - one, two or more.
Everything emerges from that, it's infinitely elegant and makes modeling the ultimate ethical future trivial.
Everything is made out of one of 3 things:
1. Agents (point or composite agents) - energy-like, time-like
2. Agentic matter - point agents that are contained by other point agents, things like chairs and stones
3. Non-agenting matter (black holes) - matter-like, space-like
I really like the cosmological part, seems like a neat solution to many important problems. Nice work!
But I am not convinced at all by the evolutionary part:
1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition.
2. To have evolution we need reproduction, which we have here, but also some competition for resources. Do universes compete for something among themselves? In an evolutionary theory I would like to see a conclusion that in the long run there are no universes not optimized for survival. Without that we can only say that our universe is more probable than a universe which cannot harbor us, but that's not super interesting.
3. It is unecessary to make cosmological part work. I suppose they fit nicely together, but if cosmological part explains observations and gives correct predictions it does so regardless of a reason for our universe's starting conditions.
Thanks for that feedback, Michał. I am going to cheat and paste in again the lengthy reply I just made to Kaleberg, immediately above, because I see you're troubled by the same thing, the evolutionary part of the theory, and my reply is therefore essentially the same.
But I'll add in an extra point of reassurance for you first, though: To have evolution work in the case of universes, you don't need competition for resources. Universe have important differences from DNA-based animals. Universes, for example, can produce matter-antimatter pairs in unlimited numbers immediately after the Big Bang. They can generate huge amounts of mass energy and gravitational energy that net out to zero (and so are free to produce). And so on. Universes are both organism and environment, and supply all their own energy for their entire lifetime. (Frugally, and efficiently, through fusion in stars, and through slow gravitational collapse of basically everything at all scales.) Energy and resources aren't externally sourced. So there is no competition for resources. So all you need for Darwinian evolution is differential rates of reproductive success.
And here is my reply to Kaleberg, again!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I do understand your feeling that the evolutionary stuff isn't needed; and I think you're right that the structure formation ideas I've laid out here could be explored without any reference to evolution of universes. I very much hope that scientists will do that, and I'm happy for them to ignore the evolutionary stuff, as they don't really need it.
The problem is, my initial successful predictions about the early universe, which led to this theory of structure formation, emerged directly from the idea of universes reproducing through black holes/big bangs, with slight variation in the properties of the child universe, leading to increased or decreased reproductive success (more or less black hole formation), and therefore Darwinian evolution of universes.
The prediction that there will be a wave of direct collapse supermassive black hole formation, shortly after the Big Bang, in our universe, is a direct implication of that theory. Primitive early universes would have reproduced by direct collapse (with no complex structure formation required, or indeed possible): those black holes would have been super- or ultramassive (not yet refined or optimised or made more efficient-per-unit-mass in any way, as that could only be done later as the result of evolutionary processes – matter itself is extremely crude at this point, is unstructured – no complex periodic table yet – and can't build structures); therefore, if we look around and see supermassive black holes in our universe, they will have been produced by the same method, direct collapse (because evolution is frugal and will have conserved that method, it won't have pointlessly come up with a more complicated and roundabout route to the same result); the direct collapse of those supermassive black holes will have to have occurred when the universe most resembled a primitive early universe, which means when it was a smooth, undifferentiated gas, before complex structure formation, before star formation, before the building out of the periodic table of elements, etc. So, well before 100 million years, probably before 50 million. (And maybe waaaay earlier, while it was still a hot quark-gluon soup, if there's an imbalance of tau in there, say. In which case the slight density fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background aren't seeds for precipitating direct collapse, they are signs that there WAS a direct collapse, that took out one-hundred-thousandth of the matter in that region while it was still hot quark-gluon soup.)
So, anyway, the initial successful predictions came directly from the evolutionary theory, before we had any observational evidence from the James Webb Space Telescope. That's strong evidence for the theory: it made great predictions! And they form the foundation for Blowtorch Theory. You can see why I can't really throw the evolutionary aspect away. But I am happy to have other scientists ignore that aspect, if it's of no use to them.
"1. I don't think it can be tested unless we can observe our child-universes or parent-universe, which we cannot, by definition."
I am a hobbyist at best and I'm sure I haven't grasped everything fully, so please indulge me. I agree with your statement, yet perhaps we could see galaxies from relatives-universes.
Could galaxies from neighboring universes expand toward us, be observable and perhaps even collide with a galaxy of ours? Could the origin of such galaxies be detected as different?
Without presuming another dimension, I'd guess that the multiverse resembles a clump of multiplying cells butting up against each other.
I dunno...
2. That’s what I was thinking. If the reproductive cost is zero, per the article, and given that time is an in-universe constraint rather than existing outside of it, then there is no selection for or against different levels of black hole optimization. They should all produce equal amounts over ‘time’, if my logic is on track here.
Moreover, if our own universe is the spawn of a black hole that presumably was produced by a technological civilization to use for energy, wouldn’t we see the effects somewhere of extra mass from outside the universe being fed into ours to use for energy on their side?
And as someone else pointed out above, if black holes can disappear over time from emitting hawking radiation, what are the in-universe implications for this?
At any rate, this article is very interesting and I love his critiques of the mainstream theory and reasons behind it. Personally, I think that reality tends to be more interesting than whatever story we come up with to draw meaning from it, which is why his theory seems (to me anyway) to lose momentum when he gets into the cosmological and more speculative section.
Cool theory, love it. Unlikely as it appears, it would be really funny if a major branch of physics ended up disrupted by a complete outsider's theory formulated in qualitative (non-math) language.
I remember reading that S. Hawking more or less proved that black holes radiate energy, so that smaller ones can end up vanishing entirely. How does that fit with your theory, or Smolin's? If the creation of a black hole also creates a universe, what happens to that universe when the black hole vanishes?
I suggest you look into black hole electrons, an old hypothesis that fell out of favor mostly because nobody could figure out how to test it, because I think you may be grossly underestimating the number of black holes involved.
Because it seems to me that the theory predicts something else: Every particle that can be made out of a black hole, will be made out of a black hole.
Aaaaargh! Yes, black hole electrons are an alarming possibility. Thanks for reminding me, I won't sleep tonight now...
No, I don't go there, because as you say, it seems untestable right now. And of course there are also the disturbing parallels between protons and black holes...
https://scitechdaily.com/interior-of-protons-exhibit-maximum-quantum-entanglement-may-share-common-physics-with-black-holes/
But again, I'm not qualified to wade into such deep water. I will stick to my modest task of explaining material reality at the macro scale in terms of evolution of universes...
🤯
Really intriguing idea—hadn't considered black hole jets as a primary sculptor of cosmic structure. Appreciate the clarity and boldness in presenting an alternative model. Definitely gave me something new to think about!
You might want to avoid association with him because he is a pariah in scientific mainstream, but Rupert Sheldrake has always been a great idol of mine, and I was wondering if you were at all inspired by him. He has spoken quite a bit about how structures (& physical rules) of the universe emerge through evolutionary processes. He's also fleshed out quite a few predictions, scientifically testable hypothesis that I think can be repurposed by your evolutionary cosmology.
I want to give this “book” you are writing to everyone I know. Any chance a hard copy will be out for Christmas?
What are your thoughts on this finding from last month? Does it affect your interpretation of the history of galaxy formation at all? https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads4057
It seems like this “dark galaxy” is being interpreted as evidence of “dark matter”, since it otherwise seems to be only composed of gas and dust and ought to dissipate. But it is only known about because of extremely faint readings, and so the overall picture has a great deal of interpretive latitude (just like the concept of “dark matter” itself).
Where could future findings lead us?
If black holes produce universes you have evolution selection pressures meaning that under most selection assumptions across possible observers we should be in a universe that is ~perfectly designed for creating a huge number of small black holes, as might happen with runaway AI that has that as a strong goal/side effect.
https://www.lesswrong.com/w/self-indication-assumption and https://www.lesswrong.com/w/self-sampling-assumption give the same answer here, right?
Or, do you have thoughts on how far across this evolutionary process we would be? Extremely far, right.
I mean, I just sat back and mentally applauded when I got to the end of this. A genius theory delivered in an entertaining manner. I'm a novice in astronomy, so can't comment on the content really, other than I follow (most of) it, I can (sort of) understand it, and it makes sense to me. Couple of commenters mention that the evolution bit is not necessary - tend to agree it doesn't really add anything, but its pretty cool!
What I'd love to see is comment from people who are experts on stuff like dark matter. People who maybe challenge your theory. Where are they all? You normally can't keep dissenters away from Substack comments. Are they dumbstruck into silence? Or is this material not reaching them?
I think if you actually get this off the ground as a genuine challenger theory that goes mainstream and is proven, it would be as impressive an achievement as anything I've ever known an individual do. I'm talking Darwin and Einstein here.
I might be missing the mechanisms of heredity within this evolutionary paradigm. If a universe's 'fitness' is simply determined by the propensity for black holes to form within it, i.e:
1. Black holes spawn universes
2. Universes well-suited for black holes production greatly outnumber those where black holes are scarce
3. Technological societies provide an immense evolutionary advantage in this context, as technological progress converges towards the creation of artificial black holes (which greatly outnumber naturally-formed ones)
how then would universes inherit from the context of their spawning black hole? What might be the analogue to recombination or mosaicism yielding subtle incremental differences subject to selective pressure?
Got any comment on the JADES findings?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08779-5
Lots of quotes from surprised astronomers declaring it should be impossible:
https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-sees-galaxy-mysteriously-clearing-fog-of-early-universe/